Pax Germanica
by House Sylveste
Summary: As the new millennium draws near, the Greater German Reich stands astride two continents. Cowed and broken by the German ghoul brigades, the only hope for the people of Great Britain lies with a mysterious organisation called 'Hellsing'.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: I wrote this largely for a change of pace from _Strange Aeons_. It was originally intended to be a one-shot, but I've found it taking on a momentum all of its own and should have some more material up soon. And of course, any reviews are gratefully appreciated._

_Warning: although the story overall will not contain much in the way of profanity, hence the 'T' rating, this chapter does contain rather a lot of swearing. If you think it should be changed to 'M' to be on the safe side, let me know._

* * *

Seras Victoria barely noticed the ghoul until she almost walked into it.

She had been concentrating on a faded photocopy of a _Vermessungsämter_ map of Lower London she had taken at her local library, trying to work out her route home as she made her way though the dark back streets. She had been desperately hoping to avoid any patrols as she came home from work – a low-paying job in a down-at-heel restaurant kitchen in Knightsbridge – and to that end she had been dodging through alleyways and taking the long way round for the past half hour. Sure, she could take the easy route, straight up the brightly lit Holland Road. But there would be cameras and a regular police presence, both quick to recognise her for what she was: a Class-4 citizen with an expired ID card and two previous convictions out way after the curfew.

And it was here of all places, in some dingy street between two decaying shopping centres that still hadn't been rebuilt since the war, that she ran into a patrol.

Fortunately, they didn't seem to have seen her. The ghoul she had almost walked into and its partner were facing away from her, standing motionless just outside the puddle of light cast by a street light and she silently thanked God for her shoes – the worn, thin soles let in a lot of rainwater but they also made almost no sound when she walked. Nevertheless, she crept away from them with exaggerated caution. Ghouls couldn't hear very well, but it paid to play it safe. She backed away, intending to find another way around.

Her foot came down on a small patch of glass – a broken bottle? a needle? – which crunched quietly.

The ghouls' heads snapped round.

Seras swore quietly as both ghouls turned and marched towards her. They moved not with the shambling, broken gait of the ferals she was used to, but with a purposeful, robotic march. If you didn't look at their faces, you could almost be forgiven for thinking they were actual people.

"Good evening...ma'am."

The lead ghoul had come to a halt just in front of her. Seras still had to fight her instinct to scream and try and fight it away from her. Three months in the big city and she was only just beginning to get used to the idea that ghouls were meant to be mindless servants rather than ravenous monsters.

The ghoul stood in front of her was a perfect example of that philosophy. Its eyes had been replaced by two blank, black camera lenses and its mouth forced open in a permanent scream. A speaker protruded from its mouth like the filter of a gas mask and various communications devices nestled in its rotting ears. A preservative slime gave its grey, cracked skin a horrible sheen. It wore – untidily, as if it had been forced into it – the uniform of a constable of the London Metropolitan Police Force, a swastika armband standing out in stark red-white-and-black contrast to its navy blue coat.

She had heard rumours that constable-ghouls like this one had methods of recognising faces and comparing them to the massive computerised databases in the Gestapo headquarters in the Overcity. If that was the case, arrest orders were probably already winging their way back to this one. Nevertheless, she did not run. It was one of the pillars of National Socialism, after all – the innocent have nothing to fear from the Law. Maybe she could bluff her way out of this. Running would confirm her guilt, and make any punishment a lot worse.

The ghoul spoke again, its phrases pre-recorded and stitched together into sentences.

"Are you aware...ma'am...that it is past...Class-3 curfew?"

Seras did her best to look shocked and contrite. "Is it? Oh, I'm terribly sorry, officer. I, ah, I was just heading home. My watch broke yesterday and I haven't had time to get it mended..." Desperate stuff, but it just might work. "I'll get back as quick as I can, don't you worry." She made to walk away.

"Halt."

Seras stopped, turning back to face the two constables.

"I will need to see your ID card please, ma'am."

_Shit_. If the ghoul saw her card, it'd see that it was out of date, and that she was out past curfew. It would probably also find out pretty quickly about her previous convictions. National Socialism – as her Social Education teacher back home in Cheddar had worked hard to drill into her and the rest of her class – held that for some criminality was endemic. These parasites of the _Volk_ were to be treated with maximum harshness: while rich, successful businessmen could kill their mothers and get five years in jail, people who committed a string of small burglaries were sent to the concentration camps for life.

And if they were _un_lucky, they were shipped off to the _Umbauslager_. The conversion camps.

All of this ran through Seras' mind in a moment as the ghoul held out its hand for her ID card. Brown, dead flesh showed in the gap between its navy sleeve and pristine white glove. Its partner, stood a few paces behind it, moved its hand to its belt, where a holster was attached. Two sets of mechanical eyes watched her carefully, clicking and whirring.

"My ID card? Um, yes, yes, of course. I think it's in my handbag..."

In one motion she opened her bag and pulled out a spray can. Aiming it at the ghoul's face, she pressed the button and sprayed a stream of building foam into its eyes.

The ghoul jerked its hands up to try and shield itself but it wasn't fast enough – ghouls rarely were – and the jet caught it full across the lenses, blinding it and setting hard. With one hand it clawed at its face, trying to clear its vision, while the other swung around and made a blind grab for Seras. Off-balance, the ghoul stumbled and Seras delivered a swift kick to its ankle. It toppled to the ground, its head hitting the kerb with a crunch.

The other ghoul was scrabbling at its holster, trying to retrieve its pistol with clumsy fingers. The speaker in its jaws was already blaring a high-pitched distress tone. "Officer requires assistance!" it screeched in English and German as Seras brought the heavy-duty spray can round and clubbed it once, twice, three times in the face. It sank to its knees. Seras reached down and yanked the pistol from its clutching fingers, before putting a bullet through it and its companion's head.

_Damned if I'm going to jail for trying to earn a few more Reichsmarks_, she though, alive with adrenaline. Tucking the gun into the waistband of her trousers, she turned and ran for home, leaving the bodies of the two constable-ghouls in the gutter.

* * *

Half an hour later, Seras sat in the shadow of the Regent's Park Trestle and couldn't believe what she had done.

_You stupid, stupid woman,_ screamed a panicky part of her brain. _What the _hell _did you do that for? Now you're going to be on the wanted list, and when you're caught – because they _will_ find you, you know, they're good at that kind of thing – you'll have 'assaulting an officer' to add to your little list of felonies. It'll be the KZ for you if you're lucky!_

KZ was slang for concentration camp, from the German _Konzentrationslager_.

Seras willed that part of her brain to shut up for a second, trying desperately not to panic. The rush of adrenaline was long gone, whittled down as she fled across Lower London, not knowing or caring where she was or where she was going as long as she put as much distance between her and that Knightsbridge alleyway as possible. Eventually she had flopped down, exhausted, on some dimly-lit bench next to the Trestle. Gasping for breath, she tried to marshal her thoughts as she gazed up at the massive structure.

It dwarfed the surrounding buildings, a colossal lattice of steel girders wrapped around a core of transport lifts and utility pipelines, rearing up into the night sky like a startled beast. Built over the old park, which had been expanded to surround it, it was one of the nine Trestles that supported that great symbol of the power and genius of National Socialism and its patron nation the Greater German Reich: the London Overcity.

Hanging like a great iron cloud about 50 metres above the rooftops of the original city – now referred to as Lower London – the vast metal plate of the Overcity stretched from Hyde Park to Greenwich, 12 kilometres long and almost six wide. It contained a whole other world on its upper side. It was a world of high-class living, expensive shops and glass-fronted skyscrapers. There were no decrepit alleys in the Overcity, no grinding poverty and no curfew. Only Class-1 and 2 citizens were allowed up except on very special occasions. It was here that the cream of the society of _Reichsgau __Großbritannien_ lived.

But all Seras could see of the "gift of friendship from the German people" from where she was sat was the dingy underbelly of the Overcity, inscribed with an enormous swastika turned grimy with pollution. The words "The power to move mountains" were inscribed around it in letters that must have been larger than houses. Seras had been told once that it was a quote from the Fuhrer when he personally opened the Overcity to the public in the 1980s – the second one in the world to be built, after (where else?) Berlin.

With one last dirty look at the home of the city's elite, where she had no doubt that puppet king Richard was quaffing some vintage wine with that fat bespectacled little bastard of a _Reichsstatthalter_, and marvelling at his good fortune as he did so, Seras turned her thoughts to how she was going to get out of this mess.

The important thing, she decided, was to keep moving. Stay in one area too long and she was sure that the police would pick her up – or if not them, one of the thousands of CCTV cameras dotted around the city would surely notice her. The best thing to do would be to get home, get what she needed and try and lie low somewhere else in the city for a few weeks. Easier said than done, of course, but there were some places in London where it was rumoured that even the undead officers feared to tread.

She set off westwards towards her rented flat in Westbourne, feeling reassured by the weight of the gun, which she had transferred to one of her jacket pockets. If it came to it, she supposed, she could always try and sneak onto a train heading north. Cheddar might not exactly welcome her back with open arms, but she doubted her fellow townspeople would slam the door in her face. And if they did, well, it was said that the border crossing to Scotland wasn't as impossible as the Reich Propaganda Ministry made it sound. But if she did that, then what? The same rumours usually went on to detail just what a terrible place Scotland had become after almost fifty years of holding out against the Reich's ghoul brigades.

That was the problem, Seras thought. Rumours on one side, propaganda on the other. For a Class-4 citizen in the Greater German Reich, the truth was hard to come by.

She looked around, trying to get her bearings, comparing where she thought she was to her crumpled map. That was the problem with Lower London – everywhere looked the same. The same dilapidated terraced housing, the same cracked pavements, the same dreary orange sodium lights. Even in the places that were supposed to be more up-market, the decay of the city was obvious. The street where she rented her accommodation had, before the war, been a high-class Edwardian-era suburb, with trees planted on the streets and the houses whitewashed until they gleamed. Now, all the trees were dead and the houses were falling down. Whole families sometimes lived in rooms designed for one person.

There were few street signs, which complicated matters. Seras had heard that they'd all been taken down in the late forties, as Nazi forces massed in Normandy for a second time, in an effort to confuse any German troops who made it into the capital. And after the surrender, no-one had the time or the will to put them back up again. Now, she largely had to guess where she was, as did everyone else who hadn't lived their whole lives in the Lower city.

She set off down another nondescript, tattered street, keeping a watchful eye out for any police patrols.

And above her, she was noticed.

* * *

"Do you know what this is, Fuchs?"

The young man with the insignia of Rottenfuhrer on his SS uniform looked up from where he was knelt over the bodies of two constables.

"I beg your pardon, Herr Obersturmfuhrer?" he asked, with a small frown.

"I _said_, do you know what this is?"

The young man, Ulrich Fuchs, looked around him, as if expecting a trap.

"This is a crime scene, Obersturmfuhrer Valentine," he replied.

The other man threw back his head and laughed a wild, manic cackle. He grinned at the man knelt in front of him, who despite being only two years younger than him was more than six ranks his junior. "The famous Kraut sense of humour, eh?" he asked, with a malicious twinkle in his eye. "You know, Fuchs, sometimes I can't tell if you're cracking a joke or if you're genuinely as thick as pig shit."

Fuchs winced at the verbal blow. His superior carried on speaking. "No, Fuchs," he said, "what this is, what _all_ of this is, is truly and irredeemably _fucked_."

Obersturmfuhrer Jan Valentine, of the London Kriminalpolizei, looked around at the dingy alley in which he was stood. Police tape was wrapped around both ends of the alley, warning passers-by in two languages not to enter. The two bodies of the constables were sprawled out under powerful arc lamps set up by Kriminalpolizei forensics team, and men dressed in the white of crime scene investigators took photos from every angle. A few human members of the Metropolitan police milled around.

"I mean," continued Valentine, turning back to Fuchs and gesturing at the bodies, "here we have two healthy young ghouls, freshly cooked up, barely a fuckin' maggot on them. They're strong and capable guys with promising careers ahead of them." He laughed at his own joke and continued. "London's fucking finest. And they're staking out this place for us, a known haunt of a drug smuggling ring, nice and quiet like, when _suddenly_, out of the _motherfucking blue_, comes some stupid little blonde _bitch_ and caps both of them in the fucking head!" His voice had risen to a shout, and Fuchs took a step back. He was beginning to regret transferring to London – the Obersturmfuhrers he had known in Hamburg hadn't been anything like this foul mouthed, ill-tempered young man.

Then again, they hadn't been vampires, either, or brothers to one of the most powerful men in the Reichsgau.

"Seven months of planning down the fucking drain! Two constables dead, the dealers scared off by the gunshots and three strike teams sitting around on their arses with nothing to do!" raved Jan.

Fuchs decided it would not be a career-enhancing move to point out that the Herr Obersturmfuhrer had done precisely none of the seven months of planning, but had instead sat in his office smoking and berating his subordinates. Instead, he settled on what he thought would be a nice and neutral statement. "A great shame, Herr Obersturmfuhrer."

Jan glowered at him. "Damn fucking right it's a shame, Fuchs. And you know what is an even greater shame, Fuchs? Its that we barely have a sodding _clue_ who did this!" He licked his lips and glanced at his watch, an expensive Swiss model that was probably worth more than six months of the younger man's salary. "I'll tell you what," he went on. "I'm a forgiving man, Fuchs. I can continue to be a forgiving man for the next half hour, but if by then you don't have a name for me I will hold you _personally_ responsible for this mess, you understand?"

Fuchs went pale as Jan grinned, revealing very sharp, very long teeth. He was about to protest – to beg, really – when a constable-ghoul ambled up to the two Kriminalpolizei officers.

"What do you want?" Jan demanded.

"The perpetrator...has been...identified...and...located...sir," came the droned response.

Fuchs breathed an ill-disguised sigh of relief as Jan's face lit up like a child at Christmas. "Really? Where?"

The ghoul handed him a printout. It was the ID card photo of a one Seras Victoria, formerly of Cheddar, now one of the many new immigrants to Lower London. The text below the picture declared her last known location to be close to Marylebone Station, seen there by one of the many autonomous surveillance drones that swooped through the skies of London.

"Oh, she is gonna fuckin' _regret_ this," murmured Jan. He turned to Fuchs. "Put the word out. Seras Victoria, wanted for the 'murder' of two bobbies, found dead in Marylebone Station. No further investigation planned." He smiled, and adjusted his SS uniform. "What do you think, Fuchs? Do I look good for a first date?"

And with a cackle, he sprinted off into the night, faster than any human could.

SS-Rottenfuhrer Ulrich Fuchs had never been a religious man, and Christianity had been outlawed long before he had been born. Nevertheless, when he got home that night, he said a small prayer for the young woman Victoria.

* * *

Seras clambered over the siding wall and dropped down onto the tracks of Marylebone station. There would be cameras on the platforms, she knew, but out here where the trains departed she doubted there would be any surveillance. _Just my luck to be run over by a train_, she thought as she picked her way over rails and around sleepers.

On the other side of the station a massive cargo train sat idling. The wagons at the back, she could see, were being loaded by a large crane that was hoisting pallets of cargo into their open bays. The two engines, one at either end of the train, were jet-black. Each had the swastika emblazoned on the side, along with the symbol of the Reich Main Security Office. It was probably a special operations train, waiting to ferry another platoon of ghouls up to the Antonine Wall.

Hoping her footsteps would be muffled by the growl of the diesel engines and the clatter of the loading crane, Seras crept across the siding, keeping to the shadows. If she could get across, it would only be a short walk to her flat.

"Evening, miss."

Seras gave a small cry and whirled around. Stood behind her was a man in an SS officer's uniform.

"Seras Victoria," the man said, advancing on her as she backed away. "Class-4 citizen, residency: Lower London. Convicted for one case of burglary and one of minor assault. Wanted for the destruction of two constables."

Seras stumbled over a rail and was sent sprawling backwards. In a flash the SS man was on top of her, pinning her down with a terrible strength. He smiled at her, a horrible leer that made it look as if his lower jaw was falling off. Fangs glinted in the light.

"And _nowhere_ in the report did it say what a looker you were!" he beamed. "You know, for a piece of fourth-class gutter trash, you sure look a lot like the Aryan ideal." He paused, inhaling her scent. "Which, I guess, means this is going to be all the fuckin' sweeter. Oh, but where are my manners? I'm Lieutenant Jan-"

He didn't get any further. Seras' hand flew to her throat, and then she slapped the man hard across the face.

The effect, to an observer, would have been surprising. Jan screeched and sprang backwards, his eyes wide with pain. Smoke started to curl from his cheek, and there was a quiet sizzling sound like red-hot metal meeting flesh. He fell to the ground and lay there moaning, clutching at his face with both hands and desperately wiping it with his gloves.

Seras, for her part, scrabbled to her feet and ran as fast as she could. And as she did so, she vividly remembered her fifth birthday, when her mother had given her what had seemed at the time a rather odd present: a thin gold necklace, on which hung a small glass pendant. On closer inspection, the pendant had turned out to be a vial, which her mum had solemnly told her was filled with a mixture of holy water and garlic. It was only later that she would learn what these were for – and the risks her mother must have run to get ahold of two of the most controlled substances in the Reich.

She forced back the bitter memories as she ran on. Behind her, she could hear the clatter of gravel as the SS man (_no, not a man_) leapt to his feet and charged after her. He was fast, but she was closer to the chain-link fence that separated the siding from the main road. If she could scale that, she might yet have a chance.

She was halfway up the fence when a hand closed around her ankle and twisted violently, yanking her down onto the hard concrete. She gasped in pain as the breath was driven from her, which turned to a scream as her ankle was twisted further with a splintering _crack_ of bones.

"You little fucking bitch," growled the officer as he rolled her around to face him. "Holy water? _Garlic_?" He shook his head. "You're lucky I'm only going to rape and kill you – I could drag you before a court, you know, and the boys in the Gestapo would just love to get their hands on someone like you.

"But we both know that's not gonna happen, don't we, bitch? Like I said, rape and kill...although which I do first is _entirely_ up to me."

From somewhere behind him, another voice suddenly spoke.

"_Pathetic_," it sneered.

Seras had the briefest glimpse of a man in a flowing red coat and charcoal suit brandishing an enormous gun at the SS officer. She even thought she saw the flash as the gun fired.

Something cold punched into her gut, and everything went dark.


	2. Chapter 2

_1st October, 1944, Warsaw Ghetto_

The light – that was what he would remember most about that day: the light and the cold. After more months than he could count holed up beneath the Warsaw ghetto, Dok had given up hope of ever seeing the sun again. Not that such a prospect concerned him, mind you. Living the rest of his life underground would have been a small price to pay indeed for the miracles as he had been able to conjure up.

But now his research was in ruins, his life's work destroyed by one damn child and a tame vampire. He took one last look around the broken, collapsed underground laboratory, quivering with rage. Four years in this place, and another fifteen of work before that – all of it up in smoke! You had to wonder whether somewhere God existed after all, and had been laughing at him every step of the way.

From the top of the stairs, up by the door to the outside world he hadn't seen in years, a voice called him. "Come _on_, Dok!" it said. "Stop moping! The train has to leave in half an hour whether we're on it or not, and you _don't_ want to keep the Fuhrer waiting, do you?"

He gave a deep, weary sigh. _I wonder if this is what it feels like to lose a son._ "Coming, Herr Major," he called back. With one final glance at what was left of his legacy he turned and began to trudge up the stairs to where the Major stood, holding the door open and tapping his foot impatiently.

_Of course. The Fuhrer_, he thought on the way up. _As if it wasn't bad enough._ The orders had come through last night, an emergency telegram from High Command to the Warsaw Labs. They had simply said: return to Berlin at once for audience with the Fuhrer. And that was it. No indication of what they would face there, no idea of whether they should try and pack up what was left of their research and take it with them. The Fuhrer wants to see you. Get a move on.

The Major had decided to dynamite the labs when they left, as he had rightly seen that the Wermacht could not hold Warsaw for much longer. Better to lose their advances forever than to have the Soviets get their hands on them. Dok passed a pair of soldiers laying detonator cables as he made his way up the stairs, overhearing a snatch of muttered conversation as he did so:

"...the way, did you _see_ what they had down there?"

"Ja, but if anything comes of that madness I'll..."

_Madness. Madness and ruins, that's what twenty years of cutting-edge research boils down to_. He raised a hand to shield his eyes as he reached the top of the stairs. The sun was brighter than he imagined, and he found himself wishing he'd incorporated some tinted lenses into his glasses. He squinted at the dumpy silhouette that was the Major.

"How far is it to the station?" he asked.

From somewhere far off – but not nearly far off enough for Dok's liking – came the chatter of gunfire. Whether it was Polish or German Dok couldn't tell.

"About twenty minute's drive, with the roads what they are," the Major replied. "The car's ready. You can mourn on the train Dok, but right now I think we should get going."

"Why? Your love of conflict waning now that we're losing?" Dok asked bitterly, and then immediately regretted it. He could see the car now his eyes had adjusted to the light, and could make out the hulking figure sat in the driver's seat. One order from the Major and that man – if you could call him a man – would snap his neck without a second thought.

But the Major just laughed. "Ach, no, Dok, not at all. In a way I will be sorry to leave this wonderful place," he said, gesturing at the ruined Warsaw skyline behind him. "A certain stark beauty to the dying city, don't you think? But it's hard to appreciate the glory of war when you're dead, Dok, and I foresee a lot more war before this is done. Ah! If only our ghouls had worked, eh? We could have played it all over again! A second fall of France, a second battle of Stalingrad, Operation Sealion Two...but listen to me. Chastising you for dawdling, and then woolgathering myself! Come."

He led Dok, who was now beginning to shiver in the cold October wind, over to the car, which sat with its engine idling. The Captain glanced round at Dok from the front seat, and afforded him the briefest of nods by way of greeting.

When both men had taken their seats, the Captain did something very unusual, and spoke.

"Two possible routes," he said, as if trying to be as economical with his words as possible. "One long but safe, the other short – but through occupied land." He raised a questioning eyebrow at the Major via the rear-view mirror.

The Major tittered like a schoolboy. "Oh, why not? Short route, Captain – might as well enjoy it while we're here."

Dok gaped at the Major, and then tried to fold himself into the footwell of his seat. _Lost his mind_, he thought to himself as the Captain threw the car into gear and they surged forwards. _The madman's gone over the edge at last._

* * *

"So you are the one the Major insists on referring to as 'Dok', are you?"

Nine hours later, still trembling slightly from their mad dash through Warsaw, Dok stood to attention in front of the most powerful man in the Reich and tried not to whimper with fear.

He had come to the conclusion, on the train hurtling westwards, that they were all going to be shot. After all, the Fuhrer never looked kindly on failure in the first place – just look at his reaction when Paulus had surrendered at Stalingrad. That, coupled with hints from the Major that he had begun to take a personal interest in the work the Warsaw Labs were doing, probably meant that he was as livid as Dok was mournful over their destruction. And when the Fuhrer got angry, it was time to either grovel or prepare your will.

The only ray of hope Dok had clung to was that he didn't think the Fuhrer would waste his time meeting personally the people whom he would shortly have killed. But it was a slim ray indeed.

"Y-yes, mein Fuhrer," he stammered.

It was true, he thought distantly, what they said about the man's eyes. Dok found that when most people talked to him they usually let their eyes wander all over his face when confronted with the insect-like, multi-lensed spectacles that hid his pupils completely. But this man Hitler – he just started right through them, gazing into the eyes he knew must be there. It was almost hypnotic. A small corner of Dok's brain reminded him that stoats did similar things just before they killed a rabbit.

"And you will confirm the Major's report?"

"Yes, mein Fuhrer," he croaked. "It is as he said. A child, and Alucard – Hellsing's tame vampire. They destroyed the labs. There is nothing left of Operation Resurrection."

Hitler, seated behind his enormous mahogany desk, raised an eyebrow. "Nothing, Herr Doktor?"

Dok frowned. "Nothing, mein Fuhrer. Herr Major ordered the lab's destruction when we left Warsaw."

"And he is to be commended for his foresight," replied Hitler. Dok thought he saw the Major give a self-deprecating grin out of the corner of his eye. "But, Herr Doktor, there is one piece of Resurrection left, is there not? One massive, essential piece? That could still provide the key to success?"

"I...I fail to see your meaning, mein Fuhrer."

"I speak of _you_, Herr Doktor. And of the knowledge inside your head."

_Oh Christ. Oh Christ, this is the bit where he orders the Captain to kill me to prove his loyalty or something like that..._

Hitler gave another small smile. "Herr Doktor, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer – and yes, you too, Herr Hauptsturmfuhrer – would you be so kind as to follow me?"

* * *

For the second time that day, Dok had to shield his eyes from a sudden, blinding light. This light wasn't the sun, however, but powerful electric lighting that seemed somehow even brighter. And as for what was revealed by these lights, well, it was safe to say that Dok would never have imagined anything like this in his wildest dreams.

The Fuhrer had led them to a lift that had plunged them deep underground. Cold, damp air had whirled around them as the lift cage had descended, bringing with it the faint smell of earth and another odour that Dok was very familiar with – formaldehyde. When the lift had ground to a halt, they were deposited in a small, dimly-lit chamber hewn from the bedrock. The far side of the cavern was dominated by a metal wall, in which was set a large door like the ones found on submarines. A bored-looking soldier in Waffen-SS uniform stood guarding it, who snapped to perhaps the most rigid attention Dok had ever seen when he realised who had just arrived.

The young SS man had tugged the door open for them, revealing a long, narrow room. Glass windows took up the wall opposite the door, and bare metal seats were bolted to the floor. The Fuhrer had sat down and motioned for the others to do the same. The door had closed with a metallic clang and Dok experienced a sudden sense of movement. _We're in a train carriage_, he realised. _Where the hell are we going?_

The Fuhrer had been silent in the lift, and Dok suspected he was undergoing one of his famous mood swings. Now, in a dangerously level tone, he addressed his three guests.

"My first instinct, upon hearing of your failure in Warsaw, was indeed to order your execution," he had said, turning to face two worried expressions and one carefully blank one. "To fail so comprehensively, and at the hands of a teenager and a subhuman Slavic slave at that, is hardly becoming of servants of the Reich. There were practical considerations as well – you in particular, Herr Doktor, are someone whose capture by the Communists I will not permit."

Dok's only source of satisfaction at this point was that the Major was looking almost as apprehensive as he was.

"You have Reichsleiter Bormann to thank for your continued existence," continued Hitler with a small scowl. "He managed to convince me, against what I like to think of as my better judgement, that you could be more useful to the Reich alive. This is not the first time the Reichsleiter has changed my mind with my regards to Operation Resurrection – as you are about to see."

And then had come the light, pouring in through the carriage windows, harsh, white, electric.

And when he could see again, Dok looked out of the window and wondered if he wasn't somehow back in Poland.

He was looking at what looked like a carbon copy of his recently-destroyed labs in Warsaw, but on a far grander scale. A huge cave had been taken over and filled with banks of machinery. Surgical units could be seen in the distance, along with rows of cages. The track of a monorail circled the cavern, which Dok guessed was what they were riding. Powerful lights in the ceiling illuminated everything in their stark glare. White-coated figures scurried back and forth, while black uniforms hurried to form up next to a monorail station that was just coming into view.

"A second Operation Resurrection," declared the Fuhrer. "An exact copy of your research in Warsaw, Herr Doktor. Our insurance policy, if you will. Whenever you had a breakthrough in Poland, we replicated it here – you should find this place identical to the one you just left. My generals tell me it is an unforgivable waste of resources in these troubled times, but both Bormann and Reichsfuhrer Himmler tell me it is worth pursuing. And when something gets those two to agree on _anything_, then maybe it is of some value after all."

Dok's jaw had fallen in astonishment. He was still trying to get used to the idea that me might not be shot after all.

"But I shall expect great things of you, Doktor. This lab is our best-kept secret, so you will not have the excuse of Hellsing coming along to ruin everything. I will want new weapons, new technology, new soldiers. Forget vampires, Doktor – ghouls will more than suit our needs at this present time. Herr Major, you will act as a liaison between the scientists here and me personally. Herr Captain, you are hereby appointed to the position of head of security of Operation Resurrection."

Later on, each of the three men would be convinced that the Fuhrer had looked them alone in the eye at this point.

"Now get to work, gentlemen. No delays, no excuses, no security breaches."

The Fuhrer's mouth twitched in amusement as the monorail train slowed to a stop. Outside, SS officers could be seen standing to attention.

"After all, gentlemen," he said, "_arbeit macht frei._"

* * *

_Author's note: Well, this chapter _tried_ to explain why Germany won WWII. I must confess to not having read/watched 'The Dawn', so I am not sure how realistic the idea of restarting the programme was with regards to Hellsing canon. But, for my part, I thought it not unlikely that the Nazis might create a back-up for such potentially war-winning research._


End file.
